so he might peruse it at greater leisurewithin the privacy of his cell.
The chapter that evoked such delight and interest within BrotherAmbrose's complicated brain was one that had been penned in the earlyages of the Church by a lay-brother who had concerned himself with paganmagic. In it, he had described the fiendish habits and activities ofwerewolves and had actually even presented a formula. _Ut Fiat HomoLupinus_ it was entitled, which purported to give the secret words andritual necessary to achieve the transformation from man to beast.
At last, the opportunity had arrived Ambrose's way to achieve hislong-desired revenge on Brother Lorenzo!
Twenty-four hours had passed since the momentous discovery. The momentwas at hand. Night again had settled upon the Spanish cloisters, thelast bell had tolled; and all the good and hardy men were supposed to beat sound sleep on their rough iron cots. But in Brother Ambrose's chillycell, a small candle burned--casting sickly light that produced hugeflickering shadows against the whitewashed walls.
Brother Ambrose held the treasured piece of manuscript between hishands. It was difficult to make out the faded Latin; the writing wascramped and crude, and Ambrose was no scholar to boot. But like allpersons of his times, he was quite well-aware of the existence ofwerewolves, werefoxes, and other such monsters; and he held no doubt butwhat the spell would work.
It was the scheming brother's plan to creep in the stealth of night downthe corridor to the barred oak door of Lorenzo's own simple cell. There,he would knock; lightly enough to disturb no other sleepers, yet loudenough that the rapping would summon Brother Lorenzo from whateverwicked dreams might be festering in his own sleeping mind.
As Fray Lorenzo's naked footsteps were heard pattering across the barefloor, Ambrose would drink the bat's blood he had collected, sniff thewolfbane he had ground to ash, and pronounce the obscure Celtic wordsthat would alter the very atoms of his flesh, transforming them into anobscene travesty of life. Brother Lorenzo, when he opened the door,would be met not by a fellow human being, but by a snarling fanged wolfthat would hurl its hairy bulk at the drowsy monk's own throat.
The next day, the entire monastery would be awakened, of course, byshouts of the news that foul murder had been discovered. But no amountof detection would ever manifest the bestial murderer. Brother Ambrosewould hug to his soul the secret of his crime until the day of hisshriving.
At length, the hour had grown so late that it was certain even the Priorhimself must have long since retired.
Brother Ambrose made ready to carry out his deed. He rose from his cot,removed the coarse brown robe that normally he wore to bed as well as inhis daily rounds so that his long-unwashed body stood naked. There mustbe no chance for tell-tale blood to stain his clothes, when his fiercetalons and wolfish teeth tore and rended at human flesh.
Carrying his precious piece of scroll, he departed from his cell andgroped his way down the stone corridor until the light improved enoughfor him to see his way. Luckily, a patch of moonlight illuminated thevery space in front of the accursed Brother Lorenzo's door. Whatfortune!
Brother Ambrose halted and stared at the door as though his eyes couldsee through it, at the sleeping form within. He sucked in a deep breath.His palms were sweaty; his heartbeat rapid. For a moment, he was almostready to back out.
Then suddenly, the memory of all the hundreds of grudges he bore againstLorenzo surged through him. Hatred built up a massive reservoir, thatbroke out over his crumbling conscience and flooded his body with angerand wild resentment. His teeth gritted. What had he been thinking of--toretreat now, with revenge so nearly at hand!
He rapped. A moment later, he heard a creaking sound like BrotherLorenzo slipping out of bed.
Trembling, he lifted the phial of bat's blood, drank it down. It tastedsalty. He chewed on the wolfbane powder until it mixed with the salivaof his mouth, then he swallowed. Holding the ancient scroll-segmentbefore him, he began to repeat the badly-written incantation: _Ut fiathomo lupinus, pulvis arnicae facenda est et dum...._
A thousand jolts assailed his body, as if he had been struck by all thelightnings in heaven. Then, came a rushing paralysis, a distortion oftime and space, a dread feeling of disintegration and death ...
The door to Brother Lorenzo's cell began to recede, swelling in volumeas it did. The ceiling of the corridor likewise retreated atever-increasing pace. Staring down at his own dwindling frame, Ambrosesaw that the slug-white flesh was now covered with thick fur, even asthe limbs were gnarling--
Then, suddenly the door opened. Brother Lorenzo stepped out, his kindlypious face wrinkled with sleep but otherwise showing no irritation ordispleasure at being summoned from his rest. At first, the monk seemednot to have noticed Ambrose's form, for he gazed above him and away.
Ambrose kept on shrinking.
Finally, Brother Lorenzo's gaze chanced to glance downward. But still,his features mirrored no recognition or alarm; only puzzlement.
_Now_, thought Ambrose, _now is the time for me to snarl_.
But no snarl, nor semblance of a snarl, emerged from his lips. Rather,his lips had elongated into long sucking proboscises, while already athird pair of limbs had commenced growing from his furred-over abdomen.
This was not a wolf-like form, he was assuming, Ambrose suddenlyrealized in terror. But if it was not lupine, what was it? Had hemisread the incantation? Had he mispronounced a simple word?
The weird crawling form into which he had metamorphosed was now hardlyan inch higher than the surface of the floor. But Ambrose's eyes hadbulged into great many-faceted orbs capable of seeing objects withgreater clarity than ever. Inches away from him, he made out the segmentof scroll he had discarded after reading aloud from it. Crawling over toit, he perused the beginning words of the spell.
And it suddenly dawned on him (while what passed for a heart andventricles within his pulpy form began simulating horror) that theancient monk of centuries ago who had first copied the incantation musthave been as careless of spelling as he. For the charm obviously did notconvert its user into a werewolf, but rather some other animal ...
Dredging up all the miserable Latin he knew, Ambrose fished for someword similar to _lupinus_.
And suddenly he had it!
_Pulicus!_ That was the word the sloppy copyist of yesteryear hadwrongly transcribed.
From the word _pulex_, meaning "flea."
Not how to become a wolf-like man, but a flea-like man--that was whatthe formula had described.
Ambrose, the flea, braced himself. Gathering his powerful legs underhim, he leaped in soaring flight to land upon the object of hatred--thegiant Brother Lorenzo, who towered so high above him.
But the gentle and considerate Brother Lorenzo, who probably would nothave hurt hair nor hide of any other creature on Earth--even he knewfull well that there is only one thing you can do to discourage a flea.
Swat!
Transcriber's Note:
This etext was produced from _Fantastic Universe_ January 1957. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed. Minor spelling and typographical errors have been corrected without note.
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